Nowhere357

I said:
Your reply:
I think you are not nitpicking - this is an important point. Please explain why it may be self-proving. My thinking is that to say "we HAVE free will" or "we DO NOT have free will" amount to assertions, while "we SEEM to have free will" amounts to accurate observation. It is the nature of the "seem" part that I think we are exploring.

You said:
Your default interpretation of 'free will' or 'true free will' I think carries too much theistic 'baggage'. I think this thread is more about individual freedom of choice, and not about omnipotent free will. I would prefer to use 'free will' as I have so far defined it, but willl use 'freedom of choice' if you find that easier. Please decide and let me know, so we stay on the same page.

I said:
Your reply:
I think my arguments were the same, the problem is our differing interpretations of the words and concepts. So here I think you've seen what I'm trying to say. My position is that free will (freedom of choice) is (seems to be) an active quality, that allows us to choose from among the limited options presented to us, and that causes physical, detectable changes in our brain/body.

You said:
If I understand correctly, this means your position is that freedom of choice is an illusion. That is, we seem to make choices, but actually the brain makes the desicions deterministically.

Looking forward to wherever this takes us!

Nowhere357

Hi John. Whenever you 'interrupt', I know I'm about to learn something.

The poll is not a scientific poll, of course, but let's pretend it is.
1) Is there only one curve associated with 'radioactive decay/quantum activity'?
2) Is this curve NOT (currently) associated with any other phenomenae?

I think (but am not sure) that you are talking about the bell curve, and so are relating 'free will' to quantum randomness. Since QR is the only 'escape' from determinism that I can see, the only leg I have left is this: which is cause and which is effect?

I would guess that an unweighted poll (pick a number from 1 thru 9, for example) would follow the bell curve. IMO this is not a measurement of 'free will'. Hmmm. How CAN we design a test to measure such a thing?

Wounded King

I found this paper on the concept of free will to be very interesting although rather disturbing.

Wegner DM.The mind's best trick: how we experience conscious will.Trends Cogn Sci 2003 Feb;7(2):65-69

There is a review of a book on the same topic here by Susan Blackmore, who is herself an interesting, and possibly disturbing, character.

Aethari

Well, if we call free will whatever happens when people seem to make choices, then "free will" so defined will exist whether the people are actually making choices or not, so long as it merely seems that they are Better might be "free will is whatever happens when someone actually makes a choice," or something along those lines.

Actually, I tried to avoid that position altogether; let's see if I can explain myself better this time around. When I said that limited free will is in essence equal to no free will, I was trying to allude to my previous argument: I don't see a reason for saying being able to choose between A + B (while being disallowed to choose from all the other alternatives) is somehow intrinsically "better" than being able to choose only A (while being disallowed to choose from all the other alternatives). It doesn't seem there is any change in "level of free will" moving from choosing amoung A, B, or C to choosing from only A or B, so why does free will disappear when we substract only one more option? (Especially when we're disallowing the gaggles of other possible choices in all cases.) It just seems arbitrary to me to say a person who has to choose A has no "free will" while the person who has to choose A OR B does have it.

Now, if we want to talk about whether people actually makes choices (even if limited ones such as A or B), it seems to me the problem is almost impossible to resolve, because we might see any of the following options (talking about free will in your sense, not mine):

1) People have no free will and are forced to act as they do by a supernatural entity.
2) People have no free will and are forced to act by purely naturalistic mechanisms.
3) People have free will and make actual choices.

Now, to me, it seems like there is no possible way to ever resolve this problem. All of these options can look identical from observation. There is (IMHO) no good argument that undermines any of the positions. I mean, how do we even say if someone does have free will? If I have the power of choice, but I would choose the same every time under set circumstances, am I free? At what point, barring omnipotence and omniscience, would we ever have "rights" to say a person has free will? In fact, we would even have to question what exactly it means to make a "choice." Does the term even make sense in a philosophical setting?

Too many questions, for now. I have two exams and a philosophy midterm essay due Thursday...I'll have to take a bit of a hiatus from the thread, to ensure my writing stays focused where it needs to be. Maybe I'll write a little treatise on free will over the weekend, and post it on the thread.

~Aethari

Neilium

Aethari,

I hear ya ... good luck with your exams. I'm simply running out of steam on this subject. I'm fascinated by what others have to say about it, but I'm a long ways from having any sort of firmly grounded view on free will. Maybe that's how it should be.

-Neil(ium)
-all gassed out

John Page

How about:

1. "People act" or "Human Beings are animate objects"

2. The above distinguishes between inanimate objects like rocks and animate objects.

3. The distinction between an animate object and an inanimate object (w.r.t. the observer) is that an inanimate object acts only through causes external to it (gravity, temperature changes etc.) whereas an animate object acts as a result of internal causes (growing, thought etc.)

4. To the extent that an object acts through unobserved causes (be they assumed internal or external), such unobserved cause can be ascribed to the "will" of the object.

5. Should the observer be unable to comprehend the (initially unobserved) mechanisms that give rise to the "will" of an object, the observer might imagine the object is "free to choose" independently from any (neither internal or external) cause.

I agree with your conclusion, that the cause of a person's actions is not immediately detectable by an observer in no way proves the existence of free will.

Cheers, John

DRFseven

There is behavioral evidence and there is neurological evidence. Do you doubt that all aspects of thinking, including decision-making, have a neurological substrate? C'mon; we KNOW we don't decide things freely. We KNOW we are bound to consider any information in light of what we already know. Now, due to brain-imaging techniques, we can actually see how this works by neurological mechanism. This is a good link from the Baylor College of Medicine, reporting on a model of the computational role of dopamine in human decision-making. In essence, the neurological system picks up environmental information through sensory channels and changes to reflect this information. These changes inform the central nervous system in it's feedback function that informs the cognitive areas of the brain. We "find out" what it is that we decide. Here's the abstract, but I have the whole paper, if you'd like it.